My brother, who lives in the same town as I do, was excited to relate the news that our town is finally getting a fast food place. It’ll be the very first one that’s ever been in this town, and it joins the three restaurants that already exist. We also got on the topic of where the nearest gas station is to our houses - he says there’s one about 4 miles from his house, but the closest to mine is over 5 miles away, near the two closest of those existing restaurants.
This got me thinking about the term “food desert” which seems to mean that a place doesn’t have fresh food in a mile’s distance, but it’s mostly applied to poor areas. The nearest grocery stores of any size to me are 7 miles to the south, 9 miles to the north, 9 miles to the west, and 8 miles to the east. The closest places I can buy any sort of food at all are at that gas station 5 miles away, a variety store that caters to campers across the street who feel like paying $6 for a box of cereal and don’t mind that the food selection is limited to an area three times the size of a walk-in closet, and a bakery kitty-corner to that. There are no farmers’ markets in town limits, and the pick-your-own farm I like is 8 to 10 miles away, with no closer farms that I’m aware of.
All of this sounds a lot like the USDA’s definition of a food desert…except the “in impoverished areas” part. The median household income in this town is well north of 75k. Mostly, because as you can imagine, virtually everyone who works doesn’t work in our little, industry unfriendly town but elsewhere where there are more lucrative jobs. Does this mean we’re not in a food desert because we can afford to pick up food on the way home from work? Though anyone who doesn’t work is SOL given the bus route through town was discontinued, and it was the only form of public transportation we ever had other than Uber…
So, what do you think? Is the lack of fresh food the more important part of the definition, or the total lack of alternatives which wealthy bedroom communities can offset by having the option of traveling a bit?
There seems to be no single definition for “food desert,” but it’s not just about distance to grocery stores. It’s about whether people in the community have the means to get fresh food - including sufficient income and access to transportation.
It sounds like most people in the OP’s community have the means to drive 7~9 miles to the stores and buy fresh food, so it’s not a food desert.
Depends on your viewpoint … my place in Connecticut is about 5 miles from town, it is a small town that is roughly 10 miles from any surrounding town and has one convenience store/gas station, 1 grocery store, 3 restaurants [1 american food, 1 pizzaria and 1 chinese restaurant] and yet accordingly we are living in a food desert. I don’t consider to be so because it is rural, not urban/suburban. 5 miles to town just is, and a function of rurality.
The desert thing is specifically referring to urban/suburban conditions, as the vast majority of the country qualifies as food desert.
The opposite, but that’s partly because I specifically choose locations with easy access to stores. My house in the mountains is specifically in a town that for administrative reasons has much better services and stores than you’d normally get in a place so small; the flat in Barcelona Metro is within 2-5 blocks of a traditional market and enough convenience stores, grocers, butchers both halal and not, small supermarkets, takeout places and restaurants that the question isn’t so much “where can we buy food” as “which of the thousand places where we can buy food do you want to try”.
In Spain the kind of place which would be a food desert is despectively called a ciudad dormitorio or barrio dormitorio (bedroom town or burough): a place where you don’t live, you merely sleep. Often they’re expensive areas, always they’re places where you may go years without having a conversation with a neighbor, and where you need transportation to go buy bread.
I have 6 full-sized supermarkets within 10 minutes walking distance of where I live. In that same distance there are 8 convenience stores that sell nutritious ready-made meals. The cost of that is high density living.
As already mentioned the meaning of the term can vary.
That said, your neighborhood as you said isn’t dirt poor I assume that means everyone has the means to travel given how far everything seems to be and the fact that you mention that they’re probably making long commutes to get to their jobs. So I personally wouldn’t call your area a food desert.
I live in one. The nearest small market closed about. 7 mos. ago. Luckily i can afford to drive and get what I need. The nearest town with a Wal-Mart or grocery is 24mi away. Or the other direction 32mi. away.
I’m not sure what people do who can’t afford to drive.
I’ve always assumed the one mile idea is based on the assumption that people would need to walk. They’re too poor to have other transportation.
For places where driving is the norm, I wanted to do an approximation, I would calculate how long it would take to walk a mile, and then compare to how long it takes to drive to the next grocery store.
If you’ve got a large veggie plot where you live, out in the country, even if the closest grocery is 25 miles away, I don’t think that’s really a food desert.
And I agree that, if you have a car and can afford to drive to the store, that’s not really what’s meant by food desert either.
Especially so if that housing location was a choice, and you could/can afford to relocate elsewhere. Also not what’s intended by the phrase ‘food desert’, in my humble opinion.
Clearly though, many people have equally unique interpretations. It’s very interesting to see the many ways people seem to think it includes them.
It isn’t a food desert only because the term is already in use to describe areas where the specific people in the area have difficulty getting to fresh, healthy, and non-expensive food.
There should be a term for areas that you need a car or taxi to get to the food, because having to do that just seems wrong to me. “Food savannah” is close but I wonder if there isn’t some better term. Poetically, I think “vast food wasteland” is closer because just like the paucity of edifying television in the early 60s, the paucity of edifying foodstuffs forces a suburban conformity on everyone.
Everything is a continuum of course. Right now I am only saved from living in what I’d consider a wasteland by the existence of a dollar-store sized food store a couple blocks from me, but the Publix 1 1/2 miles away is so far that I rarely walk. If it were not in Florida that would be another story. And also the buses are not frequent enough to make a difference in transportation times.
Even under the USDA definition, the “one mile” doesn’t apply to rural census tracts- for those tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles. If it’s 4 or 5 miles to anything , I’m guessing you’re in a rural tract.
Does it seem wrong to you or is it just not what you would prefer? I wouldn’t prefer it- but that’s why I live in an urban area with good-enough public transportation that many residents do not even have a driver’s license, much less a car. If you are going to live in a rural area or a suburban area with the sort of zoning that separates residences from stores , part of the cost of living there is being car-dependent, even to buy food.
That sort of zoning indeed seems wrong. We should be moving toward, and never should have left, a walkable model for zoning. If I lived in the country it would partially be by choice, but in the suburbs there’s no good reason to have huge tracts of just houses.
I wonder if the elderly who live in the city within one mile of a grocery store are able to live independently longer than the elderly who are living in the country and in the 'burbs.